Summary
changed from Unable to get IP from DHCP to Unable to get IP from NAT-DHCP

So it appears that this problem is Windows-host only and probably only related to Windows guests. Can you confirm this or are there any users experiencing this problem with non-Windows hosts or non-Windows guests?

I'm also having network problems after the upgrade. I'm using XP Pro as the host and have XP Home guests. I've noticed that after the upgrade the "VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter" on the host is having problems. Its status is "Limited or no connectivity". I was not having this problem before the upgrade. Please let me know if I can do anything to help isolate the problem.

I think I was a bit too fast with my comment above.
I have the problem with my Linux guests now too. :(

I created a new VM with only one NAT interface and I wasn't able to get an IP.
Then I looked in the config file for that VM and saw that the speed for this network device was "0" so I changed it manually to "1000000" like I found in another VM config.
I rebooted the VM and got an IP and was able to ping an ip in the internet ... for a few seconds, then the connection was lost.
I didn't find anything in the VM-log nor in my windows event log.

My host system is Windows XP Pro SP2 and I tried the Linux guest with a Linux-from-scratch-Live-CD and set up the guest VM type to 'Linux 2.6' but I think this doesn't matter. ;)

I downgrade now to 2.1.4 so I can work a bit but let me know if I can do something.

mantiz, I've tried to downgrade but had no success. The uninstall of 2.2.0 seems to work but I get an error during the install of 2.1.4. Please let me know if you this this to work. Also, did you start getting a problem with a network connection called "VirtualBox Host-Only Network" on your host after the upgrade. I do not know if that network connection existed prior to 2.2.0 but it is giving me problems now.

jmorey, I just uninstalled 2.2.0 via windows software management, rebootet, installed 2.1.4, rebootet, renamed all VM config files from *.xml.1.6-windows.bak to *.xml (override the prior created ones by 2.2.0) and I was done with it.
The installed "VirtualBox Host-Only Network"-Interface was uninstalled by the uninstall process of 2.2.0.

Also, did you start getting a problem with a network connection called "VirtualBox Host-Only Network" on your host after the upgrade. I do not know if that network connection existed prior to 2.2.0 but it is giving me problems now.

What kind of problems do you see with it? There should be no problems other that "limited access connection" warning, as described in comment#1 of 3670

Also, did you start getting a problem with a network connection called "VirtualBox Host-Only Network" on your host after the upgrade. I do not know if that network connection existed prior to 2.2.0 but it is giving me problems now.

What kind of problems do you see with it? There should be no problems other that "limited access connection" warning, as described in comment#1 of 3670

This particular issue is about NAT, and how the guest is unable to get a proper IP thru DHCP, and a static IP has to be assigned. I'm getting confused, since half the feedback in my bug report isn't about my bug report.

I've uploaded the dhcp.pcap file Hachiman requested. After removing the static IP I tried release/renew twice (not that I expected it to work).

This particular issue is about NAT, and how the guest is unable to get a proper IP thru DHCP, and a static IP has to be assigned. I'm getting confused, since half the feedback in my bug report isn't about my bug report.

I've uploaded the dhcp.pcap file Hachiman requested. After removing the static IP I tried release/renew twice (not that I expected it to work).

Yep, I've received it. thank you. the picture is bit strange because NAT responses on request with expected values, but for some reasons it's not accepted by guest.

I usually run as non-admin. I tried running VirtualBox as administrator, no change. I only use the Windows Firewall, disabling both host and guest Win Firewall, no change there. I don't think the additions are the problem. NAT should be able to work without the additions anyway as long as the NIC is detected. I tried screwing around with the driver options for the NIC in Device Manager, nothing.

I usually run as non-admin. I tried running VirtualBox as administrator, no change. I only use the Windows Firewall, disabling both host and guest Win Firewall, no change there. I don't think the additions are the problem. NAT should be able to work without the additions anyway as long as the NIC is detected. I tried screwing around with the driver options for the NIC in Device Manager, nothing.

It seems I found the root cause of this issue. Could you please send me an email at
vasily [dot] levchenko [at] Sun [dot] COM, then I'll send you an URL where you can fetch the build to verify the fix, or please update you profile with contacting information

It seems I found the root cause of this issue. Could you please send me an email at
vasily [dot] levchenko [at] Sun [dot] COM, then I'll send you an URL where you can fetch the build to verify the fix, or please update you profile with contacting information

Some more verbose notes: The problem is specific to Windows hosts but it does not apply to every Windows host. It seems that mostly Windows XP hosts are affected while Vista hosts are mostly not. So far we were not able to reproduce this on our testboxes but, as Hachiman already wrote, we found the problem. It is fixed with the changesets r18857, r18865, r18872. We will probably provide a new binary in about 2 days.

Some more verbose notes: The problem is specific to Windows hosts but it does not apply to every Windows host. It seems that mostly Windows XP hosts are affected while Vista hosts are mostly not. So far we were not able to reproduce this on our testboxes but, as Hachiman already wrote, we found the problem. It is fixed with the changesets r18857, r18865, r18872. We will probably provide a new binary in about 2 days.

Why wouldn't you remove the existing version until you patched this? I opened up my Virtual Box and it prompted me to download the latest version. Which I did, and now XP Guest box (which I use for development) is useless because I cannot access my source control saved on my network. Two days is a long time for me to be down. Is there no other workaround in the mean time?

Some more verbose notes: The problem is specific to Windows hosts but it does not apply to every Windows host. It seems that mostly Windows XP hosts are affected while Vista hosts are mostly not. So far we were not able to reproduce this on our testboxes but, as Hachiman already wrote, we found the problem. It is fixed with the changesets r18857, r18865, r18872. We will probably provide a new binary in about 2 days.

Why wouldn't you remove the existing version until you patched this? I opened up my Virtual Box and it prompted me to download the latest version. Which I did, and now XP Guest box (which I use for development) is useless because I cannot access my source control saved on my network. Two days is a long time for me to be down. Is there no other workaround in the mean time?

I solved this problem under XP by entering the local computers I need to access in the "\system32\drivers\etc\hosts." File. I look forward to seeing the proper fix within the next few days, as I'm not going to enter all the local machines I need to access in a host file.

Here is what I observed,
The Guest XP automatically sets the IP address to 10.0.2.15 and Default domain to 10.0.2.2.
With this configuration I can reach external websites without a problem but accessing local computers on the domain do not work. So first thing I tried was adding the local computer to the Hosts file. This worked, but before I posted my findings here is what else I tried:

I figured I should add our internal DNS servers to the network setting which should do the same thing as the Hosts file, but for some reason this failed.
Next I thought I should change the default gateway to our internal gateway to see if that would fix it. No luck.

So your suggestions didn't work for me so I went back to just modifying the hosts file. Now that I have access to my SVN server again I can wait a few days for a fix.

Some more verbose notes: The problem is specific to Windows hosts but it does not apply to every Windows host. It seems that mostly Windows XP hosts are affected while Vista hosts are mostly not. So far we were not able to reproduce this on our testboxes but, as Hachiman already wrote, we found the problem. It is fixed with the changesets r18857, r18865, r18872. We will probably provide a new binary in about 2 days.

I read thru the posts a few days back and saw that you consider this a Windows on Windows problem. My host OS is XP Pro and my guest OS is Ubuntu Server 8.10. I'm getting the problem in this combination as well. I had hoped to see a new binary released today based on this post. If that's not going to happen can you provide some form of input on how to regress my VM back to 2.1.4 so I can get my development environment back up and running in a usable fashion?

To get back to 2.1.4, just install the 2.1.4 (you will find this package on our web site). You probably need to rename all .bak files in your .VirtualBox directory back to the original names.

A proper workaround should be to set the name server and the IP (10.0.2.2) manually in the guest, Ubuntu allows this in a comfortable way.

Regarding the binary, I wrote in about 2 days. I cannot promise anything (and I don't have to, read the license if in doubt) but I can tell you that we are working hard to fix the most annoying bugs of 2.2.0 ASAP.

Users of 32-bit Windows could try to replace the VBoxDD.dll file in the installation directory by the content of this ZIP archive. Please backup the old file and make sure that no VMs are running when replace the DLL.

The patch got connectivity back, but if I run two DHCP enabled VMs they both get the same IP address assigned to them. Both have 10.0.2.15 as their IP and ipconfig /renew results in the same IP. Is that expected behavior? I would expect each VM to get its own IP.

nwsedlak, that is the expected behavior as implemented in every VirtualBox version from the beginning. Both VMs live in their own NAT subnet, therefore they both get 10.0.2.15 as IP and both can talk to the host but not to each other. If VMs should talk to each other you can configure an additional network card for each guest and add these network cards to the same internal network.

For future releases we plan to extend the NAT model to allow to share the NAT network between VMs but this is not relevant for this ticket.

I encountered this problem on a Vista Enterprise host (running unprivileged) with openSUSE 11.1 as guest (kernel 2.6.27.21). The patched DLL fixed the issue.

Some more information: after installing 2.2.0, Outlook stopped working (couldn't connect to Exchange). Removing the newly installed network interface (for Host Interface networking) resolved that. I then subsequently repaired, removed and reinstalled VirtualBox, this time without the network interface. This didn't cause any further harm.

I don't know if the presence of the network interface has anything to do with the DHCP issue, and I suspect it doesn't.

I've tried in several computers (all usin IE 7 and 8) with no success. Are you sure the file is still OK?

Try 7-zip to unzip the files. It works for me while windows fails with an error.

The download is not corrupted if downloaded using Firefox (and then opened via WinRAR, Winzip or even the old DOS pkunzip.exe). It seems a compatibility problem between the server and the IE7&8 explorers.
Finally I got the file!

I've tried in several computers (all usin IE 7 and 8) with no success. Are you sure the file is still OK?

Try 7-zip to unzip the files. It works for me while windows fails with an error.

The download is not corrupted if downloaded using Firefox (and then opened via WinRAR, Winzip or even the old DOS pkunzip.exe). It seems a compatibility problem between the server and the IE7&8 explorers.
Finally I got the file!

This problem existed for me to, host Win XP, guest Win XP, but only when my notebook was connected with the wireless adapter. So, when I was on LAN, and guest was on NAT, everything worked just fine. When I switch to wireless adapter (LAN disconnected), the guest on NAT would get "limited or no connectivity... bla bla" and no IP address. Installed the above patch (VBoxDD.DLL, 32bit) and seems to be working.

I have this similar problem. I have installed 2.2.0 r45846 and have been battling to set up a simple 4 node network for days now and finally came across this post to put me out of my misery. My guest machines are Ubuntu 8 running on a Vista Ultimite host.

Netowrk adapters of guests set to conect to NAT
I havde a Virtual Box Host only network on windows connections which seems to be doing nothing, it is given a 169 address and its properties freeze when i try and open them. A super frozen mode that task manager can't even handle.
No matter what I do I cannot set static IPs (that work) and can only use DHCP which receives the same 10.0.2.15 on each VM (along with the other similar addresses mentioned in this that dont make much sense) and only allow me to connect to the internet from my hosts and occasionally ping eachother.. but they all have the same IP address so thats not too much to get excited about!

I have read through this ticket, my question is: What do i do?
Do i:
a- re install VirtualBox?
b- use the updated DLL files?
c- roll back VirtualBox to the older version?
d- download something else that will fix it that i've misses?
e- forget virtual machines and buy 4 real ones
f- none of the above

Congratulations on your sale to Oracle, lets hope they invest heavily in VirtualBox.

I was having DHCP issues (XP Pro Guest on Vista Host using NAT) as well. For me, a fresh boot of the Guest while the host was connected would work fine. the problem I had was going from work to home and back with a VM that was running.

Home local network was 192.168.10.0 ... work was 192.168.1.0 ... I noticed this morning (at work) while trying to actually solve the problem instead of just rebooting the guest, that the DNS server that was registered was from the home network. Neither an ipconfig /release-renew nor using the repair feature on the windows network adapter (same thing basically) would refresh the DNS server to the new local server.

Rebooting the vm (possible just closing it and saving state then reopening???) would fix the problem ... until I get home. So I for my work around I just put in my home AND my work dns servers manually and that did the trick.

Don't know if this is a seperate issue completely than this ticket but it feels like it might be connected so i figured I'd post it in case it helped.

I'm still having this problem after upgrading to 2.2.0, I'm using Windows x32 as Host, and Ubuntu 9.04 as the Guest. Whenever I change wireless networks (usually home vs. school) I can no longer get a connection in the guest.

I'm still having this problem after upgrading to 2.2.0, I'm using Windows x32 as Host, and Ubuntu 9.04 as the Guest. Whenever I change wireless networks (usually home vs. school) I can no longer get a connection in the guest.

That a bit different problem, caused with lack of functionality enforcing NAT engine detect and update it's internal DHCP server state on host's adapter/address change.

I'm still having this problem after upgrading to 2.2.0, I'm using Windows x32 as Host, and Ubuntu 9.04 as the Guest. Whenever I change wireless networks (usually home vs. school) I can no longer get a connection in the guest.

That a bit different problem, caused with lack of functionality enforcing NAT engine detect and update it's internal DHCP server state on host's adapter/address change.